Our exhibition has travelled again and this time, we have stopped at the Goethe-Institut Melbourne.

This time, I particularly wanted to dedicate our exhibition opening to those of my “conversationalist” – people who told me their story for the book Memories in my Luggage – who are no longer with us and indeed had passed on by the time we met with our photographer, Eva Maria Rugel: Ernst Erdt (represented by his daughter and grand children); Paul Anders (represented by his daughter) and Pastor Ewald Steiniger (represented by two of his children, Anne und Dieter), and those who were to frail to attend the photo shoot and have since passed away: Fritz Schwab (special friend to all who knew him); my friend, Marlis Frazer and most recently, Sister Elizabeth Scheer – a Mission Sister of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus and tireless parish worker of St Christopher’s, Camberwell.

They all came to the City of Melbourne to start a new life. Pastor Ewald Steiniger in 1935 to take up a post at the Holy Trinity Church on Parliament Square, a post he held for 37 years, Paul Anders arrived as a POW in 1941, one of the “Dunera Boys”. Ernst Erdt followed the call to “sunny Australia” in 1951 and started his new life on the Snowy Mountain Scheme before settling in Melbourne. Both Paul and Ernst were members of the Dreifaltigkeitskirche, Ernst was also an active member of the Club Tivoli – starting the Chess Club, there. Fritz Schwab arrived in 1954, and after time at Bonegilla, he and his family settled happily in St Albans. Fritz is known to many as an importer of “all things German”, a sports reporter for Die Woche and for never forgetting his hoem town: Berlin! Marlis arrived later than the others. After WWII, she settled in the UK with her Irish husband. In 1991, she and Dan followed their son, Norbert, to Melbourne. Marlis was my special friend because of her ties to the small island of Föhr in the North Sea, wehre both our mothers were born. Sister Elizabeth arrived here in 1953, after a busy life dedicated first to teaching, then to parish work at St Christopher’s in Camberwell, she had –reluctantly – passed on some of her duties by the time I met her. “But I still visit our older parishioners – when I leave, I leave them with a smile on their face. I still have a ‘mission’ to perform,” she told me. “Maybe when I can’t do that anymore, I will return home and spend my remaining days in one o our convents there …” Sister Elizabeth never did return to Germany, a stroke caught her unawares. “Life has been good to me,” she told me at the end of our talks, and she, too, enjoyed living in Melbourne.

These people observed so many changes in the city, they arrived long before Melbourne became the multicultural hub and the hippest coffee-culture place ever - and yet, for all the indigenous people who make up the Kulin Nation, Wurundjeri, Boonwurrung, Taungurong, Dja Dja Wurrung and the Wathaurung people, Melbourne has always been an important meeting place and location for events of social, educational, sporting and cultural significance. Thus we, as newcomers, are pleased and proud to continue this tradition by bringing our exhibition here, while respectfully acknowledging that we are meeting on the traditional land and paying our respect to their elders, past and present.

We are shortly arriving at one of the Australian’s most important days in the year - and of special significance this year, one hundred years after Gallipoli – Anzac Day.

For many of us Germans, or German-Australians, the significance attached to Anzac Day has to be explained: that these horrific events of WWI somehow forged a sense of brotherhood and unity in a country that had been dominated by British rules and consisted of a jumble of various nationalities.Still, Anzac Day is a little bit of an anachronism to Germans who are not that far removed from the memories of two wars that brought along so much devastation, loss, grief and a long-lasting sense of guilt.

But when I prepared this speech, I remembered Dr Walter Uhlenbruch’s opening speech at Brighton, where he pointed out, how difficult it is to translate the word Heimat – as it is used in the German edition of the book: Ein bisschen Heimat im Gepäck - cannot be translated into the English.

Heimat to us means so much more than merely homeland – it is what we carry inside, our memories, our connection to a place and to people, a feeling of belonging – our roots.

And it as then that I got an inkling of what Anzac Day means to Australians. It is this almost indefinable sentiment of belonging, which we all need and crave. In a way, Heimat and belonging is what this exhibition is all about.

This is our fourth exhibition opening and I feel we have come a long way!

At Bonegilla, where we started, we got this overwhelming sense of all those migrants who had started life in Australia on this flat, barren stretch of land on Lake Hume. We were overwhelmed by the many people who came especially to revisit the place, where they, or their parents, had arrived. The stories we were told were touching and often quite emotional. Even on the day, my partner and I travelled down to pack up, a couple came through. They had heard about our exhibition and wanted to see it before we packed up. The husband cried when he told me about his family.

Then, we moved on to Glen Waverley Library where we received with the warmest welcome conceivable! Janet and Jason, team leaders and librarians, had researched the history of Glen Waverley and to our surprise, we learned that a lot of Germans had settled in Glen Waverley in the early days as fruit growers and orchadists.

We met the Mayor of Monash, Paul Klisaris, who kindly opened the exhibition for us. Paul had prepared a formal speech, but when he saw what our exhibition was about and heard Janet and Jason, he spontaneously scrunched up his speech, and told us instead about arriving here as the child of Greek migrants!

Then there was Kristian Ireland – who told us about Ostarbeiter – forced labourers, who were “recruited” in the Ukraine and Russia and forced to work in Germany during WWII. Many resettled here in Australia after the war – fearful of returning home to the Soviet Union because it was known that people who had spent time in the West were sent to Siberia to be re-educated.

Leo Kretzenbacher told us about Lesbia Harford – an amazing young woman, one of the first women to enter Melbourne University, who fought for worker’s rights, anti-conscription – and the plight of German-Australians in WWI – when Germans were suddenly coined the enemy and enemy aliens, even if they had already lived here for generations.

Finally, Averil Grieve spoke to us about bilingualism and the juggling act of keeping two mother tongues alive in the Australian home. Most importantly, she told us that bilingualism enriches us because we not only have two languages for each word, we also associate two types of culture with each word.For example, where for the Australian Christmas evokes images of summer and barbecues, prawns and a crisp glass of Chardonnay, where a German Christmas means snow, Gemütlichkeit, candle light and the smell of Pfefferkuchen …

We moved on to Brighton Library, our third stop, I was a bit thrown because they chose expatriatism as their special topic. And even though I had suggested it, amongst many others, it was the last one on my list and I didn’t actually have a speaker waiting in the wings!

But as has happened all along with this exhibition, things just kind of fell into place! There was or own Dr Uhlenbruch (of the Australian-German Welfare Society), himself an expatriate, who stepped in for our current president, Linde Mohr, who was away at the time, to open the exhibition, who told us a little bit about his own interesting life as an international business man and his tireless efforts to raise the scopes and facilities of Australian-German Welfare Society.

Carsten Johow, known to German listeners of 3ZZZ for his colourful Hafenkonzert told us about his expat experiences, which took him to all corners of the world as a repairer of large ships and vessels - and finally, four marvelous women answered my invitation to hold a panel discussion on “What’s it like - the life of an expat wife?”

Now, we have arrived at the Goethe-Institut, and I began to experience a sense of a deja vue (not just due to seeing the familiar exhibits, either!).

Mr Michael Pearce SC, Honorary Consul General of the FRG, is here once again to launch us as he did in Bonegilla.

Dr Leo Kretzenbacher. Linguist and senior lecturer at Melbourne University is joining us with his marvelous insights about the rise and fall of the early German migrants in Australia. From being well-respected citizens who contributed businessmen, scientists, pastoralists, artists, doctors and pastors amongst others to Victorian society, they were rendered enemy aliens in two unfortunate world wars.

The Lark Duo – Zina Kaynarksa and Shannon Millard -joined us and delighted the guests with their beautiful playing, as they did in Glen Waverley.

But there was more that evoked this sense of coming full circle.

Among the guests, there was Mr Hans Schroeder with his wife Natasha. And it is Hans, who in a way is responsible for all that is happening now. Quite a few years ago, over a casual Christmas lunch with good friends in the country, I mentioned to Hans, how impressed I had been by several migrant stories I had heard lately (researching for my novels). Hans suggested, I write down these stories – and he wouldn’t let off … until, in the end, I did start! When the German book had been printed, Hans assisted capably in the launch of the book – at the Melbourne University with none other than Dr Leo Kretzenbacher!

The idea of an exhibition had already crossed my mind – Eva Maria Rugel’s beautiful photographs, taken for the book, deserved to be fully appreciated. Eva and I had contacted the designer, David Wong, to help us and David was the one who created the wonderful banners which form the core of the exhibition. David also directed the set –up at the Goethe-Institut and assisted at the opening.

At the book launch, a composition by play a piece by George Dreyfus (also portrayed in the book and the exhibition, was palyed. A piece that is beautiful and haunting and takes us back to George’s very early beginnings in Australia – to Larino, the children’s home, where he and his brother were taken, when his parents had arranged a safe passage out of Nazi-occupied Germany for them. For our launch at the Goethe-Institut, George had transposed the piece especially to be played on the lute and the lute – and the Lark Duo performed it beautifully.

And another link: At the book launch, I used a quote from Goethe’s Faust:

“In the end, you are what you are”, Mephistolos points out to Faust. It seemed to me a very suitable quote to show that we never loose the sense of where we came from and that those early years of childhood and youth are vital in forming our character and the person we become. In our particular case: We never quite loose our Germanness - what we carry inside us from our formative years that is our essence – the clay that has formed us.

It is maybe not remarkable then that all the people portrayed at our exhibition, insisted on telling me first of all the story of their lives prior to coming to Australia, before they related their adventures here. In fact, they placed less emphasis on the events that took place once they arrived here.

But that doesn’t mean, we can’t add to what we started with.

At Bonegilla, one lady who arrived there with her parents, told me, she didn’t agree with the sentiments that came across in the banners. She felt, they were too negative.“We closed one door behind us,” she said, “and another one opened.”

I don’t quite agree: I think, we pass through many doors in our life, and enter others – but we don’t have to quite shut out the past.

All these people arrived here, having started life in Germany, or in an affirmed German community (Genie Fiebig in Lodsch, Poland; Hermann Ralph Uhlherr in the Templer Society in Palastine).Yet, they all adapted to new ways and ended up with their own philosophy – one that encompasses bits from both their worlds.

Paul Anders said at the end of our conversation: “I have a foot in each country.”

George Dreyfus, the composer, mingles in his music his German heritage with the New World.

Karin Koeppen of the Cuckoo Restaurant in Olinda keeps the German heritage alive in her restaurant, which has now become too a haven for foreign tourists. She said: “I keep Germany in my heart.”

Ernst Erdt acknowledged that Australia had become his home “to a large extent” but that he had never given up his German citizenship.

Inga Martinow has used her life here to “find her own way”.

Fred Glasbrenner is a Schwabe at heart, while he successfully negotiates life as an Australian businessman and sportsperson.

Genie Fiebig, who arrived here as a child, had made up her mind that she wanted to marry someone of a similar background to her own. In her husband, Gerhard, she found not only a German, but a Lodsch-German!

Hermann Ralph Uhlherr came to the conclusion that he is neither German nor a former cititzen of Palastine nor fully Australian, he is a global citizen.

And Pastor Steiniger never denounced his Germanness – throughout the war, when he was even accused of possibly being a spy for Nazi Germany and interned, he insisted on maintaining his language, in his private life and in church.

A friend, whom we have made through our face book pages and whom I like to quote for his unique Berlinerisch wit, Atze Baumhammer, told me recently:

“Whenever you acquire another language, you acquire another soul.”

Well, aren’t we all who have acquired another language, lucky – we live with more than one soul in our bodies. A spare sul to draw on, to nourish us - sort of like having a spare heart, very useful.We know that it is through language, we make sense of our world, we give it names, we describe, we find ways of explaining what is happening and to give a voice to the past and the present.

And to round off: I came across this the other day: the Japanese aesthetic or world view of wabi-sabi. Quite simply put this view states:

“Nothing can be finished, flawless or perfect.”

And that is just, what I have learned from speaking to the many people, we have met along our journey. Our learning has not finished, neither our first life nor our second is flawless and nothing is perfect.

We Germans often find it hard to accept the Australian attitude of “she’ll be right” yet on the other hand, it is quite fun to step out of the line occasionally, to be really daring, to even cross the road on a red light! (In Germany, at the dead of night, you will see pedestrians, patiently waiting at the curb for the red light to turn green.)

To sum up then, a migrant’s life is a bit like the blessing of being bi-lingual. We have not only learned that the same thing can be called by different names according to which language we use, we also have the opportunity of experiencing the world from the point of view of two different cultures – drawing from the wisdom of two souls. All the people portrayed have taught me that – they have enriched my life, and now, they are enriching yours, too.